I'm sure many of you moms can relate to this, but sometimes stress and business or in my case trying to do too many things at once, can cause me to act completely ridiculous. Last summer I had all 4 boys in the car with me, when as usual I was trying to pack in as many errands as possible before I had to go to work for the night. I pulled into the parking lot of our local grocery store during quite possibly the busiest time of the afternoon. To make that slightly more hectic it was beginning to rain, one of those good afternoon, summertime Texas thunderstorms. I had some Redbox movies that were late so my thought was that one of the boys could just jump out and return them, I could make a loop in the parking lot, come back and pick them up, completing one more thing on my list for the day....Wrong! I guess the well thoughtout plan in my head did not translate well when I hurriedly shouted it to my passengers, all of whom stared at me as if I was speaking a foreign language. Mind you there was now a line of cars behind me in the dinner-time rush of the grocery store parking lot and the light mist of rain had become large droplets coming with ever more frequency. The stress, frustration, and panic of "could you just please listen and read my mind" that mothers so often get after a long day with 4 boys hit with full force and I began to exclaim "bad idea,bad idea!!!"
The boys sat silent as I laid on the excelerator giving up on the plan. No one dared say a word, mom had LOST it. And then I just busted out laughing!!! After a quick glance at each other they all laughed too! I apologized to the boys for not being clear and rushing and most of all losing my temper over something so very silly. We all had a good laugh at my expense. To this day we still laugh about it. Jake was the worst at playfully mocking me by saying, "bad idea, bad idea" when I had other mom moments. We had a lot of fun together.
I am positive Jake was laughing at me and saying "bad idea, bad idea" a couple of weeks ago when I had an encounter with the Waste Management recycle guys. Another one of my "she's losing it moments."
Three weeks after Jake went home to heaven, the funeral home director called to let me know that his remains were ready. Two dear friends arrived to take me, and as we were backing out of the driveway, the Waste Management Recycle guys stopped right behind us trying to back out of the driveway. To my shock they very rudely threw my neighbors' recycle bin in front of the car on my driveway. I was appalled at their rudeness. My stress level was high, needless-to-say considering where we were going, in addition to the fact that we were running just a little bit behind schedule. Add to that some stressful phone calls I had just had to deal with. I decided this was too much and they needed to understand how rude they had been. So I unbuckled my seatbelt, opened the door and proceeded to yell, no, more like scream, "I am on my way to pick up my son's ashes and that was just horribly rude!!!" And in case they didn't hear me, after grabbing my neighbors bin off of my driveway, I finished it off with, "He died! He's dead! And YOU ARE RUDE!!!" (Make sure you picture all of that keeping in mind that I'm dressed in nice dress slacks and heels while waving the neighbors' recycle bin wildly over my head)
I got back in the car, calmly put on my seat belt, and said, "Well I told them!" Then busted out laughing, along with my friends. Yes, one of my finer moments! I am so glad that I can laugh at myself!
PS: Waste Management received a phone call that day from my friend, Jennifer Morris, who was in the car with me. Oh to be a fly on the wall for that conversation...
No comments:
Post a Comment